Those who stumble at the prodigality and licence of his style, and the
unchartered daring of his imagination, will find a most curious and
brilliant discussion of the whole subject in his _Essay on Shelley_,
which may be summed up in the injunction that "in poetry, as in the
Kingdom of God, we should not take thought too greatly wherewith we
shall be clothed, but seek first--seek _first_, not seek _only_--the
spirit, and all these things will be added unto us." He discusses his
own style with an unexpected frankness. His view of the use of
imagination is expressed in the suggestive and extraordinary words--"To
sport with the tangles of Neaera's hair may be trivial idleness or
caressing tenderness, exactly as your relation to Neraea is that of
heartless gallantry or of love. So you may toy with imagery in mere
intellectual ingenuity, and then you might as well go write acrostics;
or you may toy with it in raptures, and then you may write a _Sensitive
Plant_." If a man is passionate, and passion is choosing her own
language in his work, he may be forgiven much. If he chooses strange
words deliberately and in cold blood, there is no reason why we should
forgive him anything.
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